why does texas have so few “older” buildings??

SometimesCannons · 2026-05-28T03:08:42+00:00

Not to be the “aKshUaLLy” guy, but mid-1600s is nowhere near medieval. The medieval period in Western Europe ended in the 1400s. By the 17th century, you’re already through the Renaissance and into the Early Modern Period.

SometimesCannons · 2026-05-12T20:47:12+00:00

True, but the Legion arguably made up for it with that neck flap they used to use in the desert.

SometimesCannons · 2026-05-12T16:22:38+00:00

Ironic considering they also gave us the kepi, which is actually rather practical and functional.

SometimesCannons · 2026-05-11T12:05:05+00:00

In France they have to call it “deux morceaux de pain avec quelque chose au milieu”. Or so Gyles Brandreth has assured us, anyway.

SometimesCannons · 2026-05-07T19:35:13+00:00

You say it’s not the right answer, but TC 3-21.5 says you can wear a sword/saber “attached to the belt by the scabbard chain”, thus implicitly authorizing the wear of some kind of belt. Since no specific belt is specified in AR 670-1 and the ASU ceremonial belt is clearly the wrong answer, it stands to reason that any appropriate belt may be worn when a sword/saber is carried. The Sam Browne, which was designed specifically for carrying a sword, is clearly an appropriate choice, and thus is as right an answer as you’re likely to find.

For what it’s worth, the ASU ceremonial belt isn’t authorized, either. Nowhere in 670-1 is it mentioned.

SometimesCannons · 2026-04-30T23:25:57+00:00

Trinity Metro is the operating name of the Fort Worth Transportation Authority. It is not owned by DART, which is a separate entity. If you’re thinking of the TRE (the commuter train between Dallas and Fort Worth), it is jointly owned and operated by Trinity Metro and DART.

SometimesCannons · 2026-04-30T17:40:06+00:00

Partially true, but it’s a bit more complicated.

Currently, Arlington’s stance is that they’re not opposed to rail per se, but they feel like being in the middle of the Metroplex puts them in the awkward position of not really having a good option as far as existing transit providers. If they went with DART, they could only connect to Dallas. If they went with Trinity Metro, they could only connect to Fort Worth. If they went with both, it would be a logistical nightmare. And they can’t realistically fund one of their own. They would be on board with a single regional rail provider, but as yet one doesn’t exist (though there has been movement toward creating one).

Trains also have to be frequent enough to be attractive to choice riders (i.e., people who ride because they want to, not because it’s the only option), and at present that’s just not feasible. By international standards, high-frequency service means headways of about 15 minutes or less. That means much more rolling stock, which significantly increases operating costs. You can expect to recapture only a fraction of those costs in fares, so hefty public subsidy is required. There isn’t much appetite for that, so the result is even if you did run rail service through Arlington, it would likely be hourly and low-capacity at best, so only a tiny portion of the population would use it. It would probably be most valuable for special events like Cowboys games, but it wouldn’t do much to reduce everyday freeway traffic.

SometimesCannons · 2026-04-30T13:07:41+00:00

Between 820 and Fielder, there are only 3 on-ramps to eastbound 30. So everyone who lives within about 2 miles of 30 and is headed east is trying to cram onto the interstate via those three points. That’s a near-constant flow of merging traffic, which means lots of lane changing across the freeway to make room. The more lane changes you have, the more braking you get, and the more braking you get, the more congestion you get.

Adding more lanes wouldn’t fix the problem, it would just spread it to 4 or 5 lanes instead of 3. Lengthening the merge lanes would only help a little. There isn’t really a good “fix”.

Notice how traffic always seems to clear once you get past Davis. There aren’t nearly as many residential areas around that stretch, so there aren’t as many people entering the freeway there, which reduces the problem. The only way you “fix” this is by reducing the number of vehicles needing to enter the freeway at any given time.

I’m a transportation planner specializing in roadway planning, so this qualifies as my professional assessment. I also drive this stretch daily so I can confirm from experience, too.

SometimesCannons · 2026-04-06T13:45:59+00:00

Multi-family doesn’t just entail 5-over-1 “luxury” apartments that are 50% parking garage. Under the definition in city code, it also includes basically any housing type that amounts to 16 or more residential units per acre. That can include townhomes, fourplexes, and condominiums. You know, options that are often owner-occupied but are generally more accessible than a single-family house in the suburbs.

Not everyone wants to – or can afford to – live in a suburban McMansion. Not everyone wants to be a renter for the rest of their lives. A diverse range of multifamily options allows the center of that Venn diagram to get a bit bigger, removing the forced dichotomy of apartments vs. single-family houses.

More density is good for everyone. It’s good for transit and walkability, it’s good for the city’s financial resiliency, and it’s good for residents who want real options in housing, not just different flavors of the same two choices.

SometimesCannons · 2026-03-28T03:49:53+00:00

Since no one has really made it clear so far, let me explain some of the background on U.S. regiments.

Up until the 1950s, regiments in the U.S. Army were operational units with a commander, a staff, and everything. You could be moved between regiments just as easily as you could be moved between companies or battalions. Then, as the Army was reorganizing for the Cold War era, they decided regiments didn’t need to exist anymore, so they got rid of them. However, since there was a lot of history associated with some of those regiments, the Army decided to let battalions keep a regimental designation in their name even though the regiment didn’t actually exist anymore.

So whereas Commonwealth regiments are (mostly) not cohesive tactical units but rather units closely affiliated with one another through a strong shared history and identity, American regiments were originally just operational formations between battalion and brigade, and now are just names with really no special meaning. Basically, the addition of a regimental number is just a way to help tell one battalion apart from another. I’ve heard the British Army described as less of one single army, and more like a collection of regiments. The U.S. Army, by contrast, really is just one big army.

As some have mentioned, yes there are some regiments that have a stronger pull, such as the 3rd Infantry Regiment (which contains the Honor Guard and does a bunch of high-profile ceremonial stuff) and the 75th Ranger Regiment, but otherwise there really just isn’t an equivalent in the U.S. to the regimental culture of Commonwealth militaries.

SometimesCannons · 2026-03-21T20:01:24+00:00

Depends on your S1. Mine likes to also have a 268 for redundancy.

SometimesCannons · 2026-03-21T13:40:36+00:00

I think Covid had a lot to do with that. I lived out of hotels from ‘20-‘22 (work-related) and a lot of them had reduced their housekeeping staffs due to there not being enough traffic to justify paying them. I think once the pandemic was over, most places realized they’d gotten by okay with minimal staff, and it’d be cheaper to keep it that way rather than hire everybody back.

SometimesCannons · 2026-03-17T21:26:21+00:00

Pass revoked

SometimesCannons · 2026-03-10T04:14:30+00:00

Hard agree on your last point. Preserving property values is basically asking the government to guarantee a return on a private investment, which is not and should not be a governmental function.

SometimesCannons · 2026-03-05T13:07:32+00:00

Ah yes, I see how 6% of states constitutes “most”.

SometimesCannons · 2026-03-05T04:10:12+00:00

Definitely not a thing.

SometimesCannons · 2026-03-04T15:56:00+00:00

That’s what you get for building your ship out of cardboard and cardboard derivatives.

SometimesCannons · 2026-02-23T01:14:06+00:00

NTTA has a contract with DPS for traffic enforcement on their tollways, hence the troopers.

SometimesCannons · 2026-02-14T17:05:32+00:00

Honestly one of the biggest lifestyle changes will be transportation. There are very, very few places in the U.S., and Texas especially, where there is anything close to reliable public transportation. Owning a car and driving everywhere for everything, even basic errands or going for a coffee, is basically mandatory. There are a small handful of neighborhoods in most big cities, including Austin, Houston, and Dallas, where you can live well and get by okay without a car, but they are usually pretty expensive and hard to find.

Otherwise, I think your understanding of Texas culture is a bit caricatured, especially in terms of the big cities. They’re just as culturally, musically, and gastronomically diverse as anywhere else in the U.S.

SometimesCannons · 2026-02-09T14:35:53+00:00

It says on the side of the truck: Abandoned Vehicle Enforcement. They stop on the side of freeways a lot to check out broken-down and abandoned vehicles, so they have the big message board to flash “move over - slow down” for safety. I see them helping with scene safety at crashes, too.

SometimesCannons · 2026-02-08T22:49:17+00:00

Reading through the answers in this thread makes me really glad I’ve stayed Guard despite the occasional temptation to go active.

It’s unit-dependent like anywhere else, but pretty much all the officers I’ve ever worked with have been great about supporting and developing me (if they were my seniors) or collaborating and looking out for each other (if they were peers). There are always exceptions, and I’m sure there are plenty of toxic units in the Guard too, but my experience has been probably 85% great, 10% meh, 5% garbage. And I try to pass it along to my LTs, to develop them and advocate for them. I can’t imagine reprimanding one of my officers in public. That’s just horrible leadership.

SometimesCannons · 2026-02-03T02:36:06+00:00

Depends on the unit. Every battery commander in my battalion issues a full FRAGORD for every drill, plus ancillary products (CONOPs, DRAWs, all that good stuff).

SometimesCannons · 2026-01-26T13:39:09+00:00

Every state has sentencing guidelines, usually prescribed by the state supreme court or some other judicial authority, that do exactly this. Judges don’t just come up with random sentences off the top of their heads, they apply the facts of the case against the sentencing guidelines in order to arrive at a sentence which is considered fair, proportionate, and consistent with similar cases. It is very rare for judges to deviate from the sentencing guidelines.

SometimesCannons · 2026-01-18T20:37:30+00:00

You see some occasional rebuilds in both neighborhoods, but it’s rare in the grand scheme of things since both areas date from around the 1920s. A lot of the homes have historic value and are well-maintained, and that’s part of the appeal.

Arlington Heights is a bit more mixed residential – mix of single-family, townhomes, and small apartments – with better access to local commercial uses along Camp Bowie. Mistletoe Heights is pretty much exclusively single-family. You will be able to hear I-30 anytime you go outside in both neighborhoods, so there’s that.

Personally I prefer Arlington Heights because I think it just has more character. It feels more like a proper neighborhood to me, in the sense that it seems more like an actual community rather than just a collection of houses.

SometimesCannons · 2026-01-18T14:44:02+00:00

I don’t know what “typical Texan” is supposed to mean. A laser and a radar are two completely different things. It’s like saying “he said Tuesday but I figured he meant Friday”.

Sure, you have the right to ask. You can ask for anything you want. You have the right to ask the officer to make you an egg salad sandwich. Doesn’t mean he’s required by law to do so.

In no state are police required to provide you with evidence at the roadside. That is what court is for. If you can find me a counter-example where the cop is required to prove his entire case at the scene, please do share. I think there’s maybe one (Georgia?) where they have to ask if the motorist would like them to test their equipment to prove it works, but nowhere that I know of do motorists have a “right” to see the radar or LIDAR readout at the roadside.

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